I Can't Even - A Castle FanFic
by CharacterDriven
Summary: Is it possible that a nationally-broadcast crime show can literally be killing off its viewers? Castle and Beckett are hot on the trail.


**Ironic Side Note: I couldn't get my TV to work during the live broadcast! So that distant scream you heard was ME. Just finished watching it and OMFG I really almost couldn't even.**

•••

**I Can't Even**

"Viewers Succumb to Killer Broadcast!"

Doctors Mystified - Unknown Pathogen, or Mass Hysteria?

The reports started coming in at about 10:20 p.m. on Monday. An otherwise ordinary night, with millions of viewers cuddled up with cats and snuggies. 9-1-1- operators reported a strange, nathan I mean nationwide surge of phone calls, with an eerie similarity to them:

Hoarse breathing. "I can't... I can't even..."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't even what?"

"Oh my GOD!" (wheeze)

Thunk.

Ambulances and police dispatched to the scene found the same thing in almost every home: mostly women but a few men, fallen off their comfy chair of choice, barely breathing, with a crime show paused on their DVRs.

Castle and Beckett crouched over the fourth body of the evening... and there were more cropping up all over New York.

Castle put on his Speculative Fiction voice, the high, slightly nasal one that made Kate wobble between kissing him and sewing his lips shut. "Was there a snuggie malfunction or a feline-spread anaphylactic shock pathogen? Was it a killer broadcast?" He paused a moment.

Kate arched an eyebrow, thinking "Wait for it."

Castle crowed, "I've got it. Videodrome!"

He held out his fingers to feed the birds, but Esposito just shrugged him off. "Do you see any exploding heads?"

"Well, no. Not yet, but the night is young."

"Unlike you, bro."

Castle flinched. "Cold. You are _so_ cold."

"Damn straight I'm cold. It's the middle of February, I didn't get laid on Valentine's day, and the store ran out of leftover chocolate marshmallow hearts before I could lay my hands on any."

Ryan, who'd been interviewing the victim's son (he lived in her basement and had heard nothing, having been, uh, occupied with internet porn at the time) patted around in his pocket. He pulled out a slightly squashed Mylar foil packet and handed it to Esposito. "Man, that's harsh."

Esposito smirked. "What is that, an extra-large..."

"Nope. It's a marshmallow heart."

Esposito blinked back sentimental tears. "Man, you think of everything."

Perlmutter was having a field day. "All we know is that hearts literally, not just figuratively, stopped beating, and that the word of the night was "Clear."*

There were 47 deaths in the 12th precinct alone (Since some of the victims were crazy cat ladies. Figuring that out took a few days for the smell to permeate).

Thursday morning, Beckett found herself on a video conference call to Hollywood, with Gates and Castle at her side.

The show-runner was trying not to giggle. "Look, it's just your standard serial killer arc. It's no big deal. We didn't even kill off any major characters."

Beckett scowled. "Did your viewers know that? At the time?"

"Well, the ones who looked online for later episodes saw pictures of the cast still walking around... oh wait, except that one officer..."

Castle frowned. "Wait. You strung the viewers along for an entire _week_ and didn't resolve the crime until after the first act of Part 2 was already over?"

"Halfway into the third, actually" smirked the show-runner.

Gates muttered, "What kind of sadists _are_ you people?"

The showrunner held up a glass of champagne. "The kind whose ratings just went through the ozone layer. Hey, I can send you a logo lanyard, or would you rather have the fridge magnets with the stars in seven different kinds of Kama Sutra poses?"

In the end, there was no proof that the killer broadcast was anything more than mass hysteria in the extreme: even the lust for higher ratings couldn't possibly justify the mass murder of hundreds of fans. Could it?

As the international death count rose due to Holo and DVR rewatches (plus a lady who passed out cold watching the creepiest part on YouBoob), cast and crew members Tweetled their sympathy and condolences, including Nat Williams, Stella Katnip, Andie Wishing, and the creepy guy who we never want to see again because we can't unsee that scene with the thing, and for some reason William Shatner because ok whatever. Showrunners hid their smirks enough to express concern for their faithful viewers and hope that those who claimed "I am dead!" were at least alive enough to continue tweetling. Nat also added "My birthday's next month, and Charitable Drink's totally gonna freak out if my donations go down."

Truth to tell, Castle and Beckett never even watched the show, let alone the killer episode. By the time they realized how eerily it echoed their own lives, without actually involving Nikki Heat, they'd developed a certain resistance to watching it. But through the course of their eight years solving crimes together for the 12th Precinct, it was the one – or shall I say, 47 – murders they could not solve that haunted Castle and Beckett.

Sometimes she would awaken in the night and hear herself chanting: "Method. Motive. Opportunity!" Other times, he would sit bolt upright in a cold sweat, screaming "_Don't Touch The REMOTE!_"

But she did. It had to happen, sooner or later. Channel surfing on one of her rare days off, Beckett caught the episode five minutes in, not realizing what it was. She got up to take a pee break for the commercial, returned to the couch, and then she saw it. Understood the scene for what it truly was.

"Oh. My. God." Her eyes went wide, then rolled back in her head. She dropped the remote and fell to the floor, insensible.

Rick came in from a golf game with the Mayor to find her already cold. He gathered into his arms, weeping, rocking her lifeless frame. He also sat on the remote, and butt-dialed the DVR to replay.

When he looked over at the TV, his head exploded. The cleaning lady found them later that afternoon, and she's due to be released from the asylum next year sometime.

The next fall the show was cancelled, but there was a spinoff about a couple of detectives out to avenge the mysterious deaths of their female partner and her fun-loving literary shadow.

It was a huge, huge hit.

* * *

•••

*I wrote this story before seeing the episode, and when Castle said, "Are we clear?" I practically passed out.


End file.
